Youth in Bamiyan took out a sympathy rally for the victims of Japan quake today in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. Many youth marched to the top hill in front of the destroyed Buddha statues and held banners with words of condolence and sympathy messages for the people of Japan and silence for the victims earthquake and tsunami.

A PLAN to automatically deport failed Afghan asylum seekers from Australia has been condemned by a coalition of organisations and prominent experts.

The Australian Government reached an agreement with Afghan authorities in mid-January under which failed asylum seekers will be sent directly back to the war-torn country.

Australian Immigration Minister Chris Bowen hailed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which formalised the pact as a major breakthrough in tightening Australia’s borders against people smugglers and non-refugees.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Regional Representative Richard Towle was also a signatory on the deal.

But the move has been strongly criticised, with leading Australia-based social-justice group, the Edmund Rice Centre, saying there is no reason to believe returned Afghans will be safe.

“Over the past eight years, the Edmund Rice Centre’s research into Australia’s deportations has found that returning asylum seekers to Afghanistan has produced direct and fatal consequences,” the organisation said today.

It said the consequences had been felt by the returned asylum seekers themselves and their immediate families.

“Many others have suffered threats and attacks, and today live with the well-founded fear of the very persecution they sought to escape.

“Many Afghan asylum seekers in Australia are members of the Hazara ethnic minority – objects of discrimination and persecution in Afghanistan for decades.

“There is no reason to believe that the ethnic and sectarian factors, fuelling hostility towards them, have dissipated.”

The statement issued by the Edmund Rice Centre was signed by 42 organisations including the Refugee Council of Australia and the Uniting Church in Australia.

More than 14 prominent experts in the fields of social justice, religion and health have also added their names to the statement.

The statement says signatories reject the MoU and demands the Australian government “address its humanitarian obligations”.

Mr Bowen has previously said only Afghans genuinely in fear of the Taliban or facing other troubles in Afghanistan would be affected by the agreement.

About 4300 Afghans have arrived in Australia claiming asylum since 2008, with half of all arrivals by boat heralding from the troubled country, he said.

Father Jim Carty, co-ordinator of the Marist Asylum Seeker Refugee Centre has hit out at Government plans to deport failed Afghan asylum seekers back to their homeland and says any claims that these people will be protected and safe is an “absurdity.”

He also warns that in fear for their lives if forced to return to Afghanistan, many Afghans currently held in Australia’s detention centres may resort of self-harm or even suicide.

In addition, despite Government claims to the contrary, Fr Carty, a long time regular visitor to those held in detention, including those on Christmas Island, does not believe the new policy of involuntary deportation will deter other Afghans from seeking out people smugglers and risking their lives in unseaworthy craft in a bid to find safety for themselves and their families.

“When people are desperate they don’t stop to find out what government policy’s might be,” he says and points to the recent loss of 21 lives after a boat filled with asylum seekers capsized off the coasts of Turkey and Greece. “Australia isn’t the only country where people make dangerous voyages in their bid to find asylum, and the Gillard Government’s latest policy will do nothing to change that.”

Announced yesterday by the Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, the Government’s new policy is a result of a memorandum of understanding between Australia, the Afghan Refugee Minister, Jamaher Anwary and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Sydney, and enables the Australian Government to forcibly return any Afghan asylum seeker once their bids for asylum have failed.

Minister Bowen hailed the agreement with the Afghanistan’s Karzai Government as historic, taking pride that Australia could now invoke the forcible return of asylum seekers from Australia to Afghanistan – something, he insisted, that had not been possible during “all the Howard Years.”

Greeted with alarm by security experts at Australia’s universities and refugee organisations, the policy is described by Fr Carty as little more than a “political quick fix and populist response” to the Opposition’s “Stop the Boats” mantra.

“The Government, clearly in dire straits due to the large numbers of asylum seekers now being held in detention centres across Australia and on Christmas Island, have come up with a policy designed to trump the Opposition with little concern about what may happen to these people once they have been forcibly returned to Afghanistan,” he says.

Currently more than nearly Afghans are being held in Australia’s detention centres, the majority of whom are Hazaras, the Persian-speaking ethnic minority of Afghanistan. Persecuted for centuries by the nation’s dominant Pushtun tribes, Hazaras now face torture and slaughter from the Taliban not only in Afghanistan but also in neighbouring Pakistan where more than 100,000 Afghan Hazara refugees live in fear as they fight for space in squalid crowded refugee camps in Quetta.

“There is no way the safety of Hazaras men, women and children can be guaranteed if they are returned to Afghanistan,” Fr Carty insists. “In many cases their villages have been destroyed and they would have no support from extended family or friends. Instead, they would be forced to remain in Kabul where their lives would be in danger and where, in all likelihood they would be forced to live in terrible conditions in one of the refugee camps that surround the city’s perimeter.”

Fr Carty along with other refugee organisations such as the Refugee Council of Australia, also expressed his concern at the experience, expertise and impartiality of Australian officials who will make assessments on who is and who isn’t a genuine refugee.

“When an Australian government takes a public and particularly strong policy line, as they have done here, this arbitrary decision can influence the selection process down the line,” he says, citing instances where this has happened in the past, particularly during the era of the White Australia policy.

Assessments were resumed 1 October but early indications seem to suggest a higher number of Afghan boat people are now rejected.

In 1999, 97% of all asylum seekers from Afghanistan were found to be genuine refugees. These high rates continued pretty much unchanged until March 2010 when the Rudd Government instituted a six month delay in processing of all Afghan asylum seekers.

Those making assessments aware of the government’s deportation policy will now regard cases that come before them with a certain mind set, Fr Carty believes. “Interviews with asylum seekers are already fraught and translators are generally poor. And now you will have interviews with a certain mind set, and if they believe asylum seekers are being returned to safety and will be protected, they are likely to be far less investigative. That is simply human nature,” he says.

For many it is also difficult to understand how people can be returned to a country at war. Although the Australian Government continues upbeat assessments of the war in Afghanistan, Fr Carty disputes this and quotes the old adage that truth is the first casualty of war. The rhetoric coming out of Afghanistan is very like the rhetoric that came out of Vietnam, he says, with Australia following the US lead and keeping up the facade that the war, now in its ninth year is winnable.

“Our leaders say everything is going well and talk about how we are bringing democracy and social change to Afghanistan. But the reality does not seem to support this, particularly with America’s own generals admitting that things aren’t going too well,” he says.

This is just one of the reasons he and other refugee advocates and security experts put little store in the Afghan Refugee Minister’s assurances to Minister Bowen that any Afghans returned home will be safe and will be given protection.

This is particularly true for Hazaras. Afghanistan’s government likes to insist persecution of the Hazara ethnic minority has ceased and that it is now a “golden age for Hazaras.” But the same month they made this claim in June last year, 21 Hazaras were decapitated in the country’s Oruzgan province.

In the past nine years there have been numerous incidents of Hazara persecution in Afghanistan, with one of the most shocking of all uncovered by the United Nations in April 2002 when three mass graves were found containing the bodies of literally hundreds of Hazaras slaughtered by the Taliban.

AT A ceremony on Monday, Immigration Minister Chris Bowen and Afghan Minister for Refugees and Repatriation Jamahir Anwary signed a memorandum of understanding providing for the involuntary return to Afghanistan of Afghan asylum seekers ”judged not to be in need of international protection”.

There was a certain irony in Anwary’s participation, since in August 2010 his own son had been kidnapped at gunpoint in Kabul – hardly a compelling sign of a secure environment even in the Afghan capital.

More seriously, the memorandum offered very little to guarantee the integrity of the process by which it would be judged whether an asylum applicant needed protection or not.

According to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship’s annual report for 2009-10, there were 1514 visas granted at the so-called ”primary” stage (that is, on the basis of the department’s own assessment), and this represented a primary grant rate of 99.2 per cent. When appeals were taken into account, the final grant rate for Afghans came to 99.7 per cent.

Given the lamentable security environment in much of Afghanistan, and the substantial inability of the Afghan government to protect ordinary people (especially members of the Hazara minority) from persecution by groups such as the Taliban, there was nothing surprising about these statistics.

However, something changed last year. On April 9, a joint statement was issued by the Australian ministers for immigration and citizenship, foreign affairs and home affairs, announcing ”a suspension of the processing of new asylum applications” from Afghanistan. The basis for this was the remarkable claim that the ”Taliban’s fall, durable security in parts of the country, and constitutional and legal reform to protect minorities’ rights have improved the circumstances of Afghanistan’s minorities, including Afghan Hazaras”.

To those with recent field experience in Afghanistan, this was little short of bizarre: the state is so feeble that ”constitutional and legal reform to protect minorities’ rights” means nothing for ordinary people. This became all too clear in late June 2010. Reuters newsagency reported that the bodies of 11 men, their heads cut off and placed next to them, had been found in Oruzgan, the very province in which most Australian troops were deployed. A local police official commented that it was the work of the Taliban: ”They beheaded these men because they were ethnic Hazaras and Shiite Muslims”.

One would have thought that the implication of an atrocity of this sort was rather stark, and the resumption of processing of Afghan cases, announced on September 30 last year, would have seen a return to approval rates similar to those that previously prevailed.

However, on Tuesday this week Bowen gave a radio interview in which he claimed that ”some time ago, say 12 months ago, you would find approval rates of about 100 per cent. So you would find that if you came from Afghanistan and you were a Hazara, you came to Australia, you had about a 99 per cent chance of being approved because that was the information the reviewers had at that stage about the state of the Hazara people in Afghanistan … We’ve found more recently, with better information, that those approval rates have fallen … And now from Afghanistan you get primary approval rates of, you know, about 50 per cent, so 50 per cent get accepted as refugees and 50 per cent get rejected at that primary level.”

The key question is what is this allegedly ”better information” that now guides the assessment of Afghan applications? It could hardly be the considered opinion of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, for its assessment is that the ”security situation throughout Afghanistan, particularly in the south of the country, remains extremely dangerous”.

The US State Department, likewise, states that ”no part of Afghanistan should be considered immune from violence” and that the ”security environment remains volatile and unpredictable”.

In the light of these assessments, there is every reason to be sceptical of the claim that approval rates have fallen because decision makers have ”better information”.

What decision makers do have, as a result of the joint statement last April , is a much clearer idea of what their political masters want. This is the problem that lurks beneath the new memorandum. If one could be genuinely confident that no refugee would be sent back to Afghanistan, then it would be largely unproblematic. But when approval rates for asylum claims suddenly plunge when the circumstances in the applicants’ country of origin are by most accounts deteriorating, there are grounds for believing that there is something very wrong with the assessment process.

And when this happens, the human consequences for vulnerable people can be atrocious. This is something for policymakers and decision makers to remember: if they approach these issues recklessly, they will likely end up with blood on their hands.

Professor William Maley is director of the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy at the Australian National University. He is a regular visitor to Afghanistan, most recently in September 2010.

An untold catastrophe in Afghanistan is underway. There has been mass displacement and forced-migration of Hazaras from Uruzgan Province recently. Though the Hazaras, who are in minority in Uruzgan Province, have faced brutal experiences from Taliban in those areas since the rise of insurgents a couple of years ago, but the situation is getting appalling after a recent incident. In the last week of June, Taliban beheaded 11 Hazaras in Khas Uruzgan area of Uruzgan. Among them were 3 distant family members of the Editor of Hazaristan Times. This incident was reported by Rueters, but no major international media outlet gave coverage. Mention it not that local TVs and newspapers in Kabul did not know about this incident. It is an example of how the untold stories of catastrophe the Hazaras are facing in Afghanistan go unreported. The Government of Karzai is making efforts for reconciliation with Taliban. Recently hundreds of Taliban have been released from Bagram and Pul-e-Charkhi prisons. According to HTimes sources in Uruzgan, a Taliban commander who was recently released from Bagram was behind the carnage of innocent Hazara civilians in Khas Uruzgan.

There are several such untold stories that has happened, but gone unreported. Two weeks ago, a Hazara man named Naurooz was beheaded by Taliban in Sai Ganj area of Ghazni. He was from Nahoor District of Ghazni, and on the way for business travel to Ghazni city. About a month ago, 10 Hazara from Jaghori district of Ghazni were beheaded by Taliban in Ghazni. They were mostly students on their way to homes for summer vocations from Kabul. Taliban kidnapped them in Muqur area and found student ID cards from them. They were all slaughtered. Hazaras in Qarbagh and Jaghori districts of Ghazni have been under constant threat from Taliban with several incidents of carnage. They have warned Hazaras to close down girls school and supporting the Government and international troops. Afghanistan Analyst Network has this report about the catastrophe, making people to migrate and leave behind their ancestral homes and lands. The roads of Jaghori and Qarbagh are off and on blocked by Taliban pressuring people to either stop girls schools, leave the area or face Taliban!

After the incident of Hazara beheading in Uruzgan, for several weeks Hazara villages around Khas Uruzgan and other districts were isolated making no communication and travels. They were under an economic-blockade of supply and people could not travel. This appalling situation is now causing a mass migration of Hazaras from their ancestral lands in villages of Baghu-Char and surrounding areas. Thousands of displaced people have made it to nearby districts with Hazara majority, leaving behind their lands. And the worst is that, the catastrophe is not making a news on media outlets. But it has rang the bell of danger across Hazarajat. Local Hazaras of Uruzgan have already started a mass migration to other provinces.

Other than Qarbagh and Jaghori districts of Ghazni, Taliban is also showing up with night-letters’ warning in Nahoor District of Ghazni. They were already asking Hazara vehicles from Jaghori and Qarbagh for tax. Now they are warning the people in Nahoor District to close down girls schools and pay Sharia taxes to Taliban, stop cooperating with the Government and American/NATO forces.

The Hazaras have always been treated as slaves throughout the centuries of brutality in Afghanistan. The 18th century massacre of Hazara by Abdul Rehman marked the worst mass-displacement, migration and massacre of Hazaras. About 62% of Hazaras were forced out of their lands in Kandahar, Uruzgan and Zabul provinces under the brutal rule of Abdul Rehman. Taliban reminded Hazaras of the Abdul Rehman era a decade ago, when thousands were cold bloodedly massacred in Bamyan, Mazar-i-Sharif and other provinces. Today history is repeating itself, this time not under Abdul Rehman, but in the presence of American forces and NATO countries. Hazaras are paying the price for democracy at the cost of their ancestral lands, making mass migrations due to their ‘guilt’ of cooperating with American and NATO troops and adopting democratic values. But worst of all is that despite the incident of Hazara beheading that has led to current mass migration in Uruzgan, was reported by a western news agency–Rueters–no international media outlet is giving coverage to the catastrophe happening. Hazara have yet to fill the archives of their tragic history with more forced-displacements and massacres. After a decade of democracy and presence of American/NATO troops in Afghanistan, yet the time has not come for Hazaras to enjoy peace and the right of existence!, far from the prospects of equal rights.

The corrupt Government of Karzai is making no effort to stop this catastrophe. The President is rather releasing Taliban from Bagram and other prisons, who go back to Uruzgan, Kandahar and Zabul to join insurgency.

The international troops led by the US has increased the dangers for Hazaras in Uruzgan with their temporary military operations against insurgents, and compromises most of the times. And now President Obama, as revealed in the latest book by Woodwards, is more focused on getting out from Afghanistan as soon as possible, through strategies that no matter cost massacre of Hazaras or make them to leave their ancestral lands.

Kabul: According to latest reports, 18 Hazaras have been killed in todays bloody dispute between Kuchi and Hazara and later the police firing in West Kabul. According to people at the scene, Police firing caused most of casualties. HTimes contacts on ground said 5 have been shot dead by Kuchis, while other casualties were caused by indiscriminate firing of Police. Angry mob has burnt down the 6th Police Station in Kabul, while protesters are chanting against police and the Government in different Hazara-residing parts of Kabul. Firing could be heard till late evening. The anti-mob police has been deployed in the area, while angry people were marching towards 13th Police Station.

According to BBC Persian, the dispute erupted on land issues. Kuchis were claiming land of the graveyard of West Kabul and local people resisted Kuchi construction.

The Kuchi-Hazara dispute is with a long historical background, getting bloody in recent years. There have been worldwide protests against the Kuchi invasion of Behsud in 2008 and 2010, but the Government of Afghanistan has made no efforts to resole the issue.

"The Kuchis Must Withdraw From All Hazara Lands Immediately and Permanently"

The Hazara people of Brisbane Australia held a protest demonstration on June 06 against the Kuchi invation of Hazarajat. The speakers included David Ford of Amnesty International, Sandra Barlie from Australian Green Party, Freddie Steen, a human rights activit, Hassan Ghulam, Chaman Sha Nasiri, Ataullah Naseri and others. They condemned the Kuchi attack in Hazarajat and asked the international community to intervene the massacre of Hazaras at the hands of Taliban. Speakers were of the view that Karzai Government supports Taliban. The speaker from Amnesty International said “We are deeply concerned about the recent attacks on Hazaras in Afghanistan.”

Other speakers said the conflict between Afghanistan’s Kuchi nomads and Hazara villagers in district of Behsud and Daimirdad in Maidan-Wardak province, Qarabagh and Nahor District in Ghazni province is dividing the government, polarizing the country and potentially boosting the Taliban. But The Karzai government has done nothing to prevent the Taliban Kuchi’s invasion of Hazara lands. In fact, Karzai’s inaction encouraged the nomads to invade Hazara areas,”.

“Hazaras were a strong supporter of the Karzai government and the international community; we were the first to lay down our arms. We contributed to the reconstruction of Afghanistan but the international forces for security in Afghanistan and Karzai government have not protected Hazaras from attacks by the Kuchis.”

Hazaras have been persecuted and forced to flee for over a hundred years under different Pashtun rulers, the Taliban and now by the Karzai government beneath the nose of NATO forces,”. Hazara people have been denied their basic human rights and protection by the occupation forces, “The Hazaras in Afghanistan have been stripped of their basic rights, the right to food by having Kuchi flocks to graze their harvest. We have also missed out on the billions of dollar poured in Afghanistan. Now we are forced to leave our lands.” “The Hazara community from Australia, want an end to this centuries old cruel practice. We want peace and long term security,”

“We as the Australian Hazara community request the international community to intervene and stop the systematic genocide of Hazaras and brings those who have committed crimes against humanity to justice,”

“We also thank the Australian nation for providing us with an opportunity to live in a safe and secure country, but for a large numbers of Hazara peace and security is denied in Afghanistan”.

Australian Hazara Council has sent an open letter to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

To: His Excellency Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of United Nations

United Nations Headquarters,

New York City, NY

USA

Your Excellency,

We draw your attention to the ongoing killing, massacre of Hazara people, destruction of their homes, villages, schools, mosques and illegal armed occupation of Hazarajat land. Our people have been suffering from these types of tyranny for over two centuries, especially since 1890.

Many times our people trusted and put hopes into peaceful settlements of many issues with the governments of the time and compromised over and over again. Sadly with all the promises, every single time they have exercised severe discrimination and brutality against us.

All attempts by our people’s leadership during the last decades for peaceful solution to the problems of Afghanistan are very well known to the UN and its affiliated agencies. During and after the Bonn Conference, the convening of the Loya Jerga, the drafting of the Constitution and establishment of the Parliament in Afghanistan, the Hazara people anticipated the beginning of a democratic way of life which would finally bring them social justice, democracy and full participation, with dignity and rightfulness, in the development of a progressive and economically just society.

The Hazaras disarmed voluntarily and did not fire even one shot against Afghan Government and ISAF forces, but the stone age fascists (still not disarmed) with their some time religious labels and other times under Pushtunist banners tried to rehabilitate the old King Abdurrahman’s tyranny and murderous policies and practices.

With all our efforts, hard work and friendly expectations, the Karzai Government and the international forces did little for us and many other suffering and socially disadvantage groups. Instead, corruptions, nepotism, illegal occupation of homes and land plus warlords and Drug Baronies have flourished.

Civilians killing due to terrorism and “mistakes” of ISAF nullified all humane expectation. Our request and hopes from UN organizations and the international community is fading especially after the announcement of Karzai regime to place Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar forces in the government. The unconditional support of US President Obama for Karzai policies delivered more fire power to the Taliban and Kuchies to invade and kill Hazara people.

While supporting the establishment of peace and stable security in Afghanistan, the Australian Hazaras strongly sympathises with the oppressed and tormented Hazaras who have suffered at the hands of the nomads during the late aggressive invasion of Hazaristan. This is specific to the aggression and assaults seen in Behsud, Nahoor and Daimerdad which brought death, disappearance of people and injury to the defenceless local people. Hundreds of properties have been destroyed and thousands of people forced to leave their homes to escape the aggression and carnage.

1- We condemn the aggression of nomads and request the United Nations and human rights organizations, peace loving communities and groups, civil societies of the relevant donor countries to try and stop the Taliban Pushtun-nomads from the above mentioned inhuman actions. We condemn the forcible displacement of Hazara people and in the face of this invasion defend Hazaras who strongly believe in peace loving societies and in their efforts for the establishment of peaceful and democratic relations, and eradication of international terrorism and the criminal Taliban.

2- We respectfully request that you assist the Hazara people by formally advising the President of Afghanistan and his ministers and the Afghan Ambassador to the United Nations of the consequences of their failure to prevent the persecution, harassment and genocide of minority groups, specifically the Hazaras of Afghanistan.

3- The Government of Afghanistan can resolve the issue of the nomads under the provisions of Article 14 of the Afghan Constitution (regarding permanent settlement). A concerted effort by Mr Karzi to provide permanent settlement of the nomads will not only safeguard the peace and security of the country and prevent war and bloodshed but also will integrate the nomads as citizens and introduce them to the civil and cultural life of the cities.

4- We ask the international security forces, under UN mandate in Afghanistan, to effect the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of government backed Taliban forces (in the name of nomads) from Hazara homes and villages.

5- We strongly ask the international community to put a stop in the systematic genocide of Hazaras and bring those who committed crime against humanity to the hands of justice.

The result of inaction on these matters may not only facilitate the destruction of Hazara culture but also contribute to the genocide of the Hazara people of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Such inaction will also ensure that Afghanistan will remain in a state of turmoil with grave future consequences.

Hundreds of people from Afghanistan in Italy staged a protest demonstration on Sunday June 6th at Duca D’Aosta Square, near central station of Milan in Italy to condemn the fierce Taliban nomadic attacks on Hazara villagers of Behsud, Daimirdad and Nahur.

Condemning the genocide of the Hazaras in Afghanistan, the protestors expressed their solidarity and communion with the victims of recent Taliban attacks on Behsud, Nahur and Daimirdad districts. Protesters also included Italians in solidarity against the ethnic genocide of Hazaras in Afghanistan. They asked the Italian government not to support a government that applies genocide on its citizens.

The protesters also condemned the peace jirga calling it a “game show” by President Karzai to bring the Taliban back to power. The speakers said a return of Taliban would put a big question mark on the international efforts in the last 9 years in Afghanistan. Speakers talked in Italian, Dari and English. Protesters were holding banners and placards with slogans against Karzai and Kuchi. They were chanting;

“Stop targeting Hazaras!”

“Stop killing Hazaras!”

“We want peace!”

“We want justice!”

“Behsud is burning in fire! Save Behsud, Save Humanity!”

“US, NATO and ISAF in Afghanistan break your silence!”

“Kuchis attack, Taliban support, Karzai watches.”

“The Kuchi nomads should be disarmed the same as all other citizens.”

“The dialogue with the Taliban means ignoring their crimes against humanity!”